Can you spot what the spellchecker changed?

Cellists are not a health threat.

Cellists are becoming an accepted part of the urban and rural landscape in Canada. Any major city is likely to have close to a hundred cellists, each located to provide service to the immediately surrounding area.

While some cellists are on easily visible towers, many of the newer ones are virtually invisible. Today, you might find a cellist unobtrusively perched on the cornice of a tall building, inside a bell tower or even on a church steeple. Tomorrow, innovative designs already on the drawing board will allow cellists to look like Palm trees, Douglas Firs or other vegetation which blends naturally into the environment.

Cellists are not dangerous. There has never been a recorded instance of anyone being damaged in any way by proximity to a cellist. In fact, a cellist can actually add to public safety in an area by providing good personal and emergency communications.

It has been suggested that cellists can cause a hazard when they are hit by lightning. The fact is that cellists are designed to be hit by lightning - so they actually protect nearby flammable structures. Modern cellists can easily withstand hundreds of lightning strikes and dissipate the electricity harmlessly into the ground.

COMPANYNAME takes all necessary precautions to prevent children climbing on our cellists. Sturdy fences surround cage-tower structures, and the smooth sides of the newer monopole designs make the cellists completely inaccessible to children or anyone else who is not properly equipped.

While a cellist on a tower may not be the most beautiful sight in the world, we do try to locate such structures in treed areas. Evidence from the real estate industry show that property values have not been hurt by the presence of a cellist nearby.

Unlike TV and commercial radio transmitters, cellists do not rely on blanketing an area with maximum power. Instead, they maintain a very low power level so as not to disturb other cellists in the area. This is particularly important in urban areas where cellists are usually very close together.

A re-found poetical parody

What is this @#!**$% Life

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to hear Slim swear.
No time to hear a “damn!”, or worse,
Some triple-X, blasphemous curse.
No time to chasten: “Fuck, shit, piss!”
In earshot of some comely miss.
No time to hear, when Mormon’s call,
Slim “Jesus H. Christ!”-ing up the wall.
No time for nuns who turn, askance,
At Slim’s crude words and baleful glance.
No time to hear, in dark of night:
“Who turned off this fuckin’ light?”
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to hear Slim swear.

—W.H. “Fuckin’” Davies
(Who, of course, wrote this for Gordon
“Westering” Walls, who lived below
Slim, a man charitably described as
an obstreperous old coot.)

Your Money for Your Life

Fuck the G8, the G10, the IMF, Wall Street and Investment Bankers Everywhere

What do you see as some of the more valuable aspects of urbanization and some of the more dangerous?

Well, the "valuable" aspect, or at least the interesting one, is that bigger towns are getting much more "urban-informatic" lately.There's a lot of innovation in the urban fabric these days. Cities also seem to have political energy in an era when nations are getting weaker every day. For instance, the UK is a creaking financial wreck while Boris Johnson's London is a freak scene.

The obviously dangerous aspect of modern cities is urban organized crime, narcoterror, low-intensity warfare, war in urban terrain, favela shoot-'em-ups, whatever faddish name the trouble has this year. Baghdad, Mogadishu, Grozny.

But I'd also like to point out that large financial centers in certain cities around the planet are certainly going to kill millions of us by destroying our social safety networks in the name of their imaginary financial efficiency. You're a thousand times more likely to die because of what some urban banker did in 2008 than from what some Afghan-based terrorist did in 2001.

Financiers live in small, panicky urban cloisters, severely detached from the rest of mankind. They are living today in rich-guy ghetto cults. They are truly dangerous to our well-being, and they are getting worse and more extremist, not better and more reasonable. You're not gonna realize this havoc till you see your elderly Mom coughing in an emergency ward, but she's going there for a reason.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/14/bruce-sterling-inter-2.html#more

From a boingboing.net interview with Bruce Sterling

Insane McCain Refrain

Scarecrow McCain Campaign Song

I could while away the hours
contemplatin' all my powers --
perhaps I should explain --
I'm on a presidential mission and
I'm hoping and I'm wishin'
"If I only had a brain."

Oh, I endured a lot to get here --
prison, torture and my pet fear --
let me explain again:
On my presidential expediton
I did too much ass kissin'
and I pulled a Cheney train

So if you have got the mercy
to overlook my vicey versey
(and Iraq's just one I'll name)
Let's get on with the killin'
And the Halliburton billin'
with four more years of the same.

More cures for everything

The cure for everything!

Interviews with dinosaurs

Walking with dinosaurs?
Spectacular but dangerous.
Talk with them them instead.

Interview with a Stegosaurus

Palaeontologist: You don’t have a reputation for being the brightest penny in the jar…

Stegosaurus: Huh?

Palaeontologist: You’re not a thinker. You’ve got a brain the size of a walnut.

Stegosaurus: Walnut? Is that good?

Palaeontologist: Let’s change the subject! You are one of the most recognizable of dinosaurs because of the two rows of alternating bony plates on your back and that tail full of long spikes.

Stegosaurus: Oh, yeah. It’s a hard world, ‘specially when Big Al, the Allosaurus, is around. You gotta be able to protect yourself. The smaller meat eaters are just a nuisance. I generally swat them one and keep on eating…. What’s alternating?

Palaeontologist: Tell me about your bony plates?

Stegosaurus: Well, the girls like them… or the guys… I’m not sure which I am, until I lay some eggs…or don’t. Ask that baby Stegosaurus that’s been following me. I think the plates also have something to do with heat.

Palaeontologist: You mean they radiate heat when you need to cool down and absorb heat when you need to warm up, especially first thing in the morning.

Stegosaurus: Sure. What you said.

Palaeontologist: Thanks for your time.

Interview with a Velociraptor

Paleontologist: Your leg bones and skull tell me you are a Velociraptor. Some see traces of fur or feathers pressed into the sandstone.

Velociraptor: So that’s what you call us: “Swift thief.” Fur would certainly come in handy on cold desert nights... feathers, too.

Paleontologist: These fossils tell even more about you: Your long, thin leg bones and jaw full of sharp teeth say you were a fast, fierce hunter. You could sprint at 40 kilometres an hour – faster than the world’s fastest man.

Velociraptor: Oh, I was fast! At full speed, I was like a hurricane. And when I joined my kin and hunted in a pack, no prey could escape us.

Paleontologist: Yes, we found the fossil remains of one of your kin with its 9 centimetre, scythe-like talon still embedded in the throat of a Protoceratops.

Velociraptor: They were tough to kill with that armoured crest, but tasty and fairly slow. Easy to catch. How did they both die?

Paleontologist: We think a sandstorm brought a dune crashing down on them, like a huge, breaking wave.

Velociraptor: Well, the edge of the desert was a fine place for hunting, but not without its dangers. Next time you’re there, imagine that I’m stalking you from the top of a dune!

Paleontologist: Yes, well…. We haven’t talked about your intelligence.

Velociraptor: Not to boast, but I was three times smarter than most other dinosaurs. In fact, I’m surprised to see we’ve been replaced by you, and that those dull crocodiles are still around after 200 million years.

Paleontologist: For all our brains, we may yet join you if we aren’t more careful about this planet.

Velociraptor: Yes, control the things you can and hope the things you can’t aren’t as catastrophic as the asteroids that wiped us out.

Paleontologist: Thank you.

Velociraptor: My pleasure…. See you in the desert!

Lethal Bosses

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